Industry backs Canada's foreign buyer's ban changes, but which new homes qualify?

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s partial pivot to let foreign buyers purchase new homes is drawing support from development and real estate organizations across the country. Last week, the…

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s partial pivot to let foreign buyers purchase new homes is drawing support from development and real estate organizations across the country. Last week, the Government of Canada released its 2026 budget, which included extending the existing foreign buyers’ ban on residential property through January 2029. However, there would be new exemptions for foreign buyers seeking to acquire new homes, with the ban on existing homes maintained.

The federal government has noted that this amendment to the ban would attract investment into the construction of new housing while keeping most of the existing market available to Canadians. The ban first began in January 2023 — amid the post-pandemic emergence of a hot real estate market and escalating home prices across the country, at a time when Canada was experiencing significant population growth due to the federal government’s elevated immigration targets — and was initially intended to last for two years.

In 2024, it was extended to January 2027, with the 2026 federal budget indicating that legislation will soon be implemented to extend and amend the ban through January 2029. This also coincides with changes to the federal government’s 2027 immigration targets, specifically expanded opportunities for temporary residents already in Canada to become permanent residents.

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Before the federal government’s foreign buyers’ ban took effect, foreign buyers represented a relatively small share of Metro Vancouver’s home purchases — due to the existing impacts of the Government of British Columbia’s provincial foreign buyer’s tax, which was first created in 2016 with a 15 per cent tax rate before it was increased to 20 per cent in 2018. Foreign buyers were involved in approximately 1.4 per cent of B.C.’s residential property transactions in 2022, the year before the federal ban took effect.